Stefan Klein

How To Act On Your Own Behalf, April 1 - 14th , 2016

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These propositions functions as a written proposal: in relation to Lawrence Weiner's "Declaration of Intent" the instructions do not need to be executed but can be read as a manual and performed by anybody. Each format is equal.

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Stefan Klein holds a Master in Sociology and is currently enrolled at the Public Arts and New Artistic Strategies Program (Master Fine Arts) at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions internationally. His works are amongst others in the collection of MoMa - Museum for Modern Art, NY (USA), Tate Gallery, London (UK), MAK – Museum for contemporary Art, Vienna (Austria), Albertina, Art Museum Vienna (Austria), Weserburg, Museum of Modern Art, Bremen (Germany), Klingspor Museum, Offenbach (Germany), Art Library - Berlin State Museum (Germany), Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Nationalbibliothek Leipzig.He is also a founding member of the record company Slamming Doors in Golden Silence and runs the independent publishing house VERLAK.

Patryk Stasieczek

Images without Text, March 18 - 31st, 2016

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Vancouver-based artist Patryk Stasieczek presents a set of photographic sketch documents. This selection of raw images marks the development of a new body of large-format photographic work, still untitled, and is presented as unedited .jpeg and animated .gif files without text.

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Patryk Stasieczek (b. 1984) is a visual artist living in Vancouver, BC. He holds a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver, BC) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Philosophy from Concordia University (Montréal, QC). He is the active director and co-curator of Gallery 295, a young gallery located in the heart of Vancouver’s art district that focuses on emerging contemporary photographic practices and dialogues. He also works as a photographic lab technician and is currently a sessional instructor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

He has exhibited within Canada and in the United States, participating in exhibitions at Access Gallery, Galerie Les Territoires, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Eastern Bloc, Interstitial Gallery, WAAP, FIELD Contemporary, and the FOFA Gallery. His work has been published both nationally and abroad, and was featured on the cover of Hong-Kong based Pipeline Magazine’s 2014 Juried Photography Issue. In 2015 he was nominated for Henry Art Gallery's BRINK award.

Colleen Heslin

An ongoing conversation between Vancouver-based artist Colleen Heslin and the British Museum, regarding the Assyrian sculpture titled The Last Woman Standing.

"The most confusing word in the wall didactic is ‘unflattering’ to describe the statue. Is this word used to describe the statue as a sculpture unflattering, or the female form carved and represented as unflattering? Who perceives this as unflattering, the Assyrian people or modern western audience? I am struggling to read this as an objective reading of the work when in other places this statue is cited as produced for the purpose of enjoyment and titillation. If enjoyment was the intention of the statue for the Assyrian people, then I am to think that this statue represents an ideal figure of its time, rather then an unflattering one..”

- Selection from letter to The British Museum by Colleen Heslin.

“While ancient concepts of beauty are not necessarily easy to grasp we are of course not blind to the fact that ancient cultures are remote and ancient cultures, but we have a great deal of evidence from Mesopotamian art that beauty in women can never have been exemplified in this statue. Perhaps you will disagree but then, ultimately, this is a matter of personal taste, but against the backdrop of Mesopotamian statuary and likenesses on all scales this statue is unquestionably ‘unflattering’ as it is coarsely finished, heavy, lumpen, distorted and reminiscent of an ape.”

- Selection from response letter from Dr I. L. Finkel, Assistant Keeper, Department of the Middle East, The British Museum

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Colleen Heslin is an artist and independent curator based in Vancouver, BC. Heslin has an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University and is the winner of the 2013 RBC Painting Competition. Heslin’s work explores medium crossovers and metaphysical concerns relating to material and causality. Founder of The Crying Room Projects in 1999, Heslin facilitates an independent and ongoing public mural space for emerging artists in Vancouver. Heslin’s most recent solo exhibitions were held at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver, 2015, and the Esker Foundation in Calgary, 2016. Her work has been exhibited and published in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Birthe Piontek

her story, February 19th - March 3rd, 2016

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“... one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (…); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars-and it is not enough if one may think all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again...”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

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Birthe Piontek is a fine art photographer based in Vancouver BC, Canada. Originally from Germany, she moved to Canada in 2005 after receiving her MFA from the University of Essen in Communication Design and Photography.

Birthe describes her photography as an exploration of the individual and is interested in the concept of Self. Her main focus is portrait photography but she also utilizes other art forms like installation and sculpture to investigate the essence of portraiture and to what degree identity can be visualized. Her latest work looks into her mother's and grandmother's loss of memory due to Dementia and Alzheimer's disease and examines the relationship between memory and identity.

The mode of art making, as an immediate reaction to contemporary events reported in the daily news, characterizes the Seattle-based Israeli artist's recent work method.

In her works, she responds ironically and critically to news items, in a way that enables the viewers to re-think and re-consider the way messages are transformed through global media.

For example, in her video, "Vegetarian Panini," the artist is sitting at the UNESCO heritage site of San Gimignano, Italy, listening to a news broadcast by CNN about the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS - another UNESCO heritage site.

While hearing the news announcer describing ISIS fighters shattering two thousand years of Palmyra history into dust, we watch the tourists’ cameras repeatedly capture San Gimignano old center behind the artist. These simultaneous acts of the obliteration we hear described in a report juxtaposed with the creation and accumulation of more and more photos we see in front of us, ironically implies a global compensation mechanism of ancient icons.

The situation of displacement -- caused by the experience of tourism and by connecting to an online news report from the other side of the world -- emerges into a single image of the Panini Eater tourist-artist as the intersection of accumulating histories and knowledge.

In this sense, the video refers to the traditional role of San Gimignano as a central junction for European pilgrims on their way east, where commodity and information were exchanged.

But as we can see in the video, neither the casual experience of the tourist, nor the tension of the politically-involved are fully executed, culminating in a strong feeling of anxiety.

In the video, "Being Occupied" the news items are no longer just outside information. Here, affected by the news of the occupation at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, and the death of David Bowie, the artist lip syncs the announcer’s voice describing the Oregon occupation, while covering her own eyes with a bandage, adopting Bowie's performance in his last video clip “Lazarus.” As hinted by the work's name, the redundant coverage of the wildlife refuge occupation becomes a state of mind in which the artist can no longer control the flow of information that encompasses her, and becomes [pre] occupied by it.

In this state of mind, different news items with no connection between them are being poured to a new third hybrid sarcastic image that, as hinted by the fake black tears, does not hold any intention nor meaning of itself.

Thus, in the emotional economic model offered to the viewers by the artist, redundancy transforms to the absence of meaning, meaningful data to meaningless words, and real death to fake tears. All this challenges the effectiveness of today's routes of information and illuminates the responsibility of popular media in creating a desensitized public.

Dr. Noa Hazan, visual culture critic for the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University, currently works and live in New York.

Anthony Cudahy

pale horse leading, January 22 - February 4, 2016

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My partner, Ian, was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in October of last year. Months and two rounds of chemotherapy later, his scans fortunately show no cancer. Often, I think the illness cut everything into two distinct parts: before and after. Other times, the diagnosis bleeds into the time before—integral to our story from the beginning. These different viewpoints beg the question: Was this event a given or an expulsion from innocence?

History collapses so easily, translated through whatever dominates our current perception. Time and our understanding of it is mutable, and the fear is that life is brief with no possibility to reverse or for reprise. I rifle through history to try to understand, explain, and find answers in the face of this fear. Images are at my disposal to rearrange and translate. The mille-fleur tapestries which read like futile attempts to order nature into neat quadrants. The Blind Leading the Blind’s climax. Lazarus and Pompeian remnants and the Expulsion. Trying to kill St. George’s dragon. The pale horse.

There may be an infinite stream of options/iterations/versions but each cuts off possible paths. Endless expulsions.

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Anthony Cudahy is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA in 2011 from Pratt Institute. He co-curates Slow Youth.

His work has appeared in shows across the United States and the UK. In 2015, he exhibited a body of paintings entitled The Fourth Part of the Day at Farewell Book’s gallery in Austin, TX and was in a two-person show at the Dawn Hunter Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. He has been in group shows at ATHICA, the Nancy Margolis Gallery, Vox Populi, the Perfect Nothing Catalog, and the Knockdown Center. His work has also been featured and reviewed in publications including the Paris Review, Hello Mr., Marco Polo Quarterly, and Cakeboy. He is a former resident of the Artha Project.

Katy Lester

sometimes as heartache, sometimes elation / October 2 - 15, 2015

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I created this body of work with the intention of investigating how our association with different thoughts and feelings changes as we go through our lives. Something that has always fascinated me is how people’s opinions are subject to outside influence, as well as the way that that influence may or may not be applied as further stigma to our preexisting notions. While I continue to feel passionate about so many things, I also experience this passion in ways that are not necessarily positive.

This notion has been weighing heavy on me lately due to the House decision to defund Planned Parenthood. As someone who identifies as a feminist, I feel familiar with the roller coaster of emotions that comes with identifying this way. While I often find strength with other women in this, at other times find myself discouraged when friends or family say or do things that negate what it means to be a feminist. In the specific case of Planned Parenthood, I recognize that I once sought solace in knowing this was a resource and safe space for myself and millions of other women and men, and I now experience anger at the myriad of misunderstandings that ultimately led to its defunding.

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Katy Lester is an artist currently living in Seattle, WA. She graduated with double degrees in Photomedia (BFA) and Journalism (BA) from the University of Washington in 2014. Her work is typically grounded in the building and deterioration of relationships, whether they be with people, places, things or the individual self.

Eli B

Piano Finish / September 18 - October 1, 2015

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I once pressed the palm of my hand onto Glenn Gould's piano.

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Eli Bornowsky received his BFA in Visual Arts from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver (2005) and his MFA from Bard College, New York (2014). He has mounted painting exhibitions in Vancouver including the Western Front, Blanket Gallery, the Burnaby Art Gallery and CSA, and exhibited in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include the Ottawa Art Gallery and Diaz Contemporary (Toronto). He has curated exhibitions for the Or Gallery including, Making Real (2008), We are Invisible Here… (Or Gallery Berlin 2012), After Finitude (2013), and the ongoing Clamour and Toll, a series of experimental music and performance. He currently resides in Vancouver and Brooklyn.

Kyle Seis

See-Through / August 28 - September 10, 2015

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See-Through is about looking for a place that only exists when you can't see it.

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Kyle Seis earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2014, and is the recipient of a Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists and a Midwest Society for Photographic Education Scholarship. His work has been shown in galleries and institutions such as the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI), and the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO). In addition, Seis is the founder of Wavepool, a contemporary art blog dedicated to sharing interviews with artists who engage with the medium of photography.

Francesca Lohmann

Soft Crack / August 14 - 27, 2015

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Taffy settles over a stretch of time. Movement is slow, but continuous throughout.

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Born 1986 in San Francisco, California, Francesca Lohmann holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA from Cornell University. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions at various venues, including in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. She currently lives and works in Seattle.

Ellen Garvens

Still Moving / July 17 - 30, 2015 (extended through August 13)

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I am grateful to Violet Strays for the challenge to make something new. The videos come out of a series of photographed still lives taken against the palimpsest of my grown children's bedroom wall. The clips may look like animation but are not, the slight of hand made by much simpler means. For me they reflect the history of the room with wrestling bodies, reading children's books, and imaginary animals and mountains.

I have always seen silhouetted faces looking up through the branches of trees in our yard. The branches eventually grow and change so after a few weeks the faces disappear. The same may be true of my remembrances in this room.

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Ellen is a professor at the University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design, and chair of the Division of Art and Photomedia Program. She received a B.S. in Art at the University of Wisconsin and a MFA from the University of New Mexico. She has received a Fulbright–Hayes Scholarship, National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship Grant, and an Artist Trust /Washington State Fellowship. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and featured in Each Wild Idea by Geoffrey Batchen, Contact Sheet #150 by Light Work, and the journals Creative Camera and Visual Studies.

Ellen's work is often straddling between 2 and 3 dimensions; recent images mix drawing and photography.

Anne Fenton

White Noise / July 3 - 16, 2015

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White Noise is a composition of background sounds from the artist's home.

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Anne Fenton received a BFA in Photography from the University of Washington and attended the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Seattle Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Lawrimore Project, Art Basel Miami, and recently at the Henry Art Gallery as the recipient of the 2013 Brink Award. She has organized exhibitions at Crawl Space artist-run gallery, which she co-founded and directed, and a program of artist talks at Western Bridge. She lives and works in Seattle.

Neal Fryett

Five Cabin Pics / June 19 - July 2, 2015

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Neal Fryett (Seattle, WA) received his MFA from the University of Washington in 2011 and was a fellow in The Art and Law Program at Fordham Law School in 2014. Recent group exhibitions or performances include: Strange Coupling (OK Hotel, 2015), Pandemonium (Frye Art Museum, 2015) and In the absence of (Greg Kucera, 2015).

Kiki MacInnis

Water Margin / June 5 - 18, 2015

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Kiki MacInnis is a painter who lives and works in Seattle. In her current practice she focuses on drawing with brush and ink on paper. She draws large drift trees and roots on site at the beach, and brings smaller matter like seaweed holdfasts, barnacles and shells back to her studio. Each time she returns to the beach objects large and small have unexpectedly moved. Most of the drawings in the Water Margin animations are studies and sketches accumulated from older projects. Like a sunken log--once a tree, now home to lively communities of sea organisms --these drawings had a previous life and are now transformed.

Brandon Aleson

Generation Loss / May 22 - June 4, 2015

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A point of reference gives truth its veracity.

Photogrammetry can be used to reconstruct 3-dimensional models from a series of interrelated 2-dimensional images. The technique utilizes projective geometry to generate a point cloud within a 3D coordinate system based on relative points of reference across the image set. Single points of view coalesce into a multi-faceted copy, one in which new optical perspectives are made available that are inaccessible to the single images alone. Rather than an isolated render, a new element is synthesized, existing in relation to, yet set apart from its individual constituents: an emergent phenomenon, much like a body, or a family.

This type of copy has a poetic relative in the twin, and the constitution of one is reflected in the surface of the other. In Christian mythology Jacob duplicitously steals his twin Esau’s birthright and blessing; the astrological Gemini is inconsistent and multiple, and hard to trust. Even the etymology of the word shows it to be polymorphous: “to twin” has been historically used to affect a bringing together; but also to fragment, making two from one.

If a copy is to be like something, then it can only be like itself: something from which the original may sometimes be inferred, sometimes extracted; yet something in which the original is only a point of reference, seen through a lens. Within the effervescence of a Violet Strays show, creative reconstructions of the family are able to play freely, furtively hovering above a definition - a metamorphic copy, with the shadow of the original perpetually in tow.

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BIO: Brandon Aleson is an artist living and working in Seattle, Washington.

Ryan Oskin

Under Construction / May 8 - 21, 2015

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The environment of cities are in a constant state of regeneration with a limitless number of building sites. These temporary spaces become dislocated within their own environment as boundaries are erected. During this state of displacement, I document and use these photographs and objects as catalysts for studio-based works. My minimalistic use of materials and forms lay somewhere between the ready-made and the art object. Simultaneously, the construction workers’ labor starts to become ambiguous during this process as their gestures appear intentional and unintentional. By exposing and expanding this mutual process of creation, I conflate my practice with a layman’s knowledge of building to question the photographic object.

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BIO: Ryan Oskin investigates themes of domesticity and nature through photography, sculpture, and video. He is the co-founder of TGIF Gallery, an artist run group showcasing emerging artists. His work has been shown throughout the United States in Chicago, Portland, New Orleans, and New York City. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Photography in 2012. He currently lives and work in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Dawn Cerny

A table A chair A vase A flower / April 10 - 23, 2015

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A pair of conversations with people who have commited a part of their lives to the construction of sensations. Conversation 1 is with a trio of choral musicians about their craft. Conversation 2 is with a perfume designer about scent construction and memory.

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BIO: Dawn Cerny received her MFA in sculpture from Bard College. Dawn works in a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Her work has been shown at many venues including Henry Art Gallery; Or Gallery in Vancouver, Canada; and Night Gallery in Los Angeles.

Leigh Wells

Visage / February 27 - March 12, 2015

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LeighWells constructs mixed media collage-drawings using found images or elements from previous work, stripping them of their original context through editing, cutting and combining. Adding drawn line work or painted geometric shapes and colors increases spatial and narrative ambiguity, resulting in hybrid compositions that embody the shifting, ungraspable nature of reality by combining dissimilar or contrasting qualities: organic/geometric, hard/soft, and dimensional/linear. Attempts to reconcile or interpret them reveal the mechanisms by which we try to understand and define what we see and experience.

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BIO: A Bay Area native, Leigh holds a BFA summa cum laude from USF with further study at Crown Point Press, the San Francisco Art Institute and Parsons/New School in New York. She lives and works in Emeryville, California.

Seth David Friedman

A text and a video diary retell the same event, albeit poorly. The end-result leaves much unresolved.

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BIO: Seth Friedman was born in Manchester CT in 1971, the unexpected third of triplets. At present, five themes run through his self-taught work:

1) seeing terrible things happen to children at his day job2) saying the words 'art basel' while making fart noises3) eating pudding4) deciding whether or not to buy pudding after watching people confronted by (1)5) repeatedly singing the PIL song-lyrics: "I could be wrong. I could be right" as "It was me that was wrong and I am sorry. So very sorry."

Julie Alpert / Andy Arkley

Vacation Slideshow, 2015 Animation / January 30 - February 12, 2015

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In September 2014, Julie and Andy visited Amsterdam, Basque Country, and Madrid. These are the photos from their trip. Enhanced.

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BIO: Julie Alpert is a Seattle-based installation artist and painter. She has a BA from the University of Maryland and an MFA from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Award, MacDowell Colony Fellowship, New Foundation Grant, two GAP grants and was a 2013 Neddy at Cornish Award Finalist. From 2009-2014, she was a member of SOIL Artist-Run Gallery and in April 2015 was Artist-in-Residence at Clark College. Julie often collaborates on animation and performance with her husband, Andy Arkley, of the art collective LET'S and the band The Bran Flakes.

Andy Arkley is 1/3 of the interactive sound and light sculpture trio, LET'S and a member of the sample collage band, The Bran Flakes. He has a BA from The Evergreen State College in animation and was a 2014 GAP grant recipient. His work has been shown at Pictoplasma, Berlin, SOIL Gallery, and Bumbershoot. LET'S will be exhibiting a new sound and light installation at Gallery4Culture in July 2015.

CL Young / Emily Gherard

A collaboration of poetry and drawings by writer CL Young and visual artist Emily Gherard.

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BIO: CL Young was born in Aspen, CO and currently lives in Portland, OR. She is from Boise, ID.

Emily Gherard lives in Seattle Washington. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2002) and her MFA from the University of Washington (2004). Her work explores the idea that painting and drawing have the ability to present inanimate objects in ways that allow the viewer to empathize with them.

Julie Alexander

Under the underbrush / November 28 - December 11, 2014

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Julie's paintings and drawings that make up her video work on Violet Strays are "straight forward material layerings. They are lines and scrubbings and movements." Julie says her process is "full of intention - I apply, I scrape and erase, I make a statement and negate it."

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BIO: Julie Alexander is an artist and curator working in Seattle. She's a member of SOIL Gallery in Seattle and has curated exhibitions in Seattle as well. Julie has exhibited broadly in Seattle, NY, and Miami and is the recipient of numerous grants including the Jentel Residency and the Artist Trust Fellowship.

Rafael Soldi

Forgotten / November 14 - 27, 2014

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Rafael pairs images of destruction and construction in Seattle's changing Capitol Hill neighborhood with forgotten images from his archive that were once consigned to oblivion. These diptychs present two images in conversation about memory and loss.

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BIO: Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian­-born, Seattle-­based photographer and independent curator. He holds a BFA in Photography & Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Soldi’s work has been exhibited and published internationally at the Frye Art Museum, American University Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Greg Kucera Gallery, Connersmith, Emory University, Photographic Center Northwest, Vertice Galeria, and G. Gibson Gallery among others. He is a 2012 Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Award Winner, 2014 Puffin Foundation grant recipient, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, and the King County Public Art Collection, among others. His work has been published in PDN, Dwell, Hello Mr, Quiver, and Metropolis, among others.

Ashleigh Rauen

le charme / October 31 - November 13, 2014

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Violet Strays is pleased to present a new illustrated video by Ashleigh Rauen. Ashleigh believes that our eyes crave a little human touch in today's throwaway digital culture, even if only for a fleeting moment.

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BIO: A skilled printmaker and illustrator, Ashleigh Rauen has been awarded residencies in Iceland and Italy. When she is not pursuing creative endeavors she spends her time in the saddle as a horse trainer and professional equestrian on bucolic Vashon Island, WA.

Shaw Osha

Arabesque In Remembrance of Kajieme Powell / October 17 - 30, 2014

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Arabesque In Remembrance of Kajieme Powell is based on a cell phone video that was available on the internet that depicts the couple of minutes when the potential flow of events was still undetermined.

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BIO: Shaw Osha maintains studio practices in Seattle and in Elizabeth Foundation in NY as well. She is currently a member of the faculty at Evergreen State College and teaches an interdisciplinary arts curriculum. She has exhibited work in such venues as New York's Pocket Utopia; The Hedreen Gallery at the Lee Center for the Arts, Seattle University; and Satellite UNC, Chapel Hill.

Jenene Nagy

tumbleweed / October 3 - 16, 2014

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tumbleweed is a new project that investigates the idea of source material and the dispersal of information within the context of a creative practice. Originally developed as a lecture for Heidi Schwegler's MFA Seminar in the AC+D program in Portland, tumbleweed is a mapping of residue, influence, and research.

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BIO: Jenene Nagy is a visual artist living and working in the Inland Empire. She received her BFA from the University of Arizona in 1998 and her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2004. Nagy’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Portland Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Torrance Art Museum, Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin, Germany, and Dam Stuhltrager in NY, among others. Recent awards include an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a three-month residency at Raid Projects in Los Angeles. In 2011 Nagy was named as a finalist for the Contemporary NW Art Awards. Along with a rigorous studio practice, Nagy is one half of the curatorial team TILT Export:, an independent art initiative with no fixed location, working in partnership with a variety of venues to produce exhibitions. From 2011-12 she was the first Curator-in-Residence for Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, Oregon and currently serves on the board of ART PAPERS magazine.

Dylan Neuwirth

Privacy Settings / September 5 - 18, 2014

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The world's on fire and my Instagram on wreck. LOL.Dylan Neuwirth is a posthuman contemporary artist working with social media to establish the nature of identity at the intersection of IRL and the Internet.

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BIO: Dylan Neuwirth is a posthuman contemporary artist working at the intersection of capital and culture to establish the relevance of identity in a civilization of spectacle beset by fear, doubt and isolation. Born in 1977, lives in Seattle; represented by SEASON. Be sure to discover all new lies about "Dylan Neuwirth" plus the output in neon, sculpture, public art, image, video, digital media and experiments in technology (after I got sober in 2011, because the work before that is shit) with continued promises of fame or success on my CV. Psyched to be in this UK group show where people could take anything they wanted in some kind of anti-capitalist form of infinite exchange since it was all free like the world is anyway. Even after hiding in plain sight and giving them nothing but totally cool distanceABSOLUTE ZERO certified my street cred again after I almost sold out but my IG is still seriously on wreck. Pumped they used the underground electronic artist bit in Beautiful Decay. No name drop in the Huffington Post or Wall Street Journal but I do get it in the WIRED article for making 200-year-old paintings go viral. That pop theory public art spectacle that nearly ruined me in this Vanguard spot is really cool, just don’t take it at face value. I really did ask my longtime girlfriend to marry me over Facebook (also in person at the same time so it wasn’t corny and actually felt like being in a stadium since I made the post the exact moment I proposed) with a neon David Bowie lyric from one of the best songs off of Low with a huge shout out in Seattle Met. Steal it better IRL Vice. I have made and still do make physical objects so either ignore the ISC or make some room in your condo. Discount all subjective opinions in The Stranger and City Arts unless you work for them. It’s all good on the infinite inside joke overshare Net Artist Daily. That one time I was on ARTFCITY. Burn your blog bro.

Alyson Provax

Each Day The Same / August 22 - September 4, 2014

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Each Day The Same is comprised of a series of animated gifs that each began in the tactile world as letterpress prints and silkscreen monotypes. Inherent to the nature of gifs is repetition, and the work deals with cycles and monotony.

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BIO: Alyson Provax is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in casual language, the experience of moving through time, and the occasional sublime. She listens to overheard conversations, explores a dilettantish interest in physics, and generally looks for interesting explanations of everyday phenomena. Alyson received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and she received the school's Liberal Arts Award at graduation.

Adam Boehmer

Night Shift / August 8 - 21, 2014

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In Night Shift, Boehmer continues his on-going investigation of material and form through automatic graphite drawings on found black Arches paper. Created during the night-time hours, the work shifts dramatically as light catches the graphite, revealing symbology referencing map-making, landscape, and an abstracted, mysterious narrative.

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BIO: Adam Boehmer is a Seattle-based artist, writer, and musician. His visual art has shown at Cairo, Nepo5k, LxWxH, Vignettes, and Cornish College of the Arts. His poetry has been published in journals nationwide including The Los Angeles Review, Spork, Monarch Review, and the anthology The Full Spectrum from Knopf Press. He creates and performs folk music under the name Tenderfoot .

Delaney Allen

Getting Lost / June 13 - 26, 2014

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In Getting Lost, Allen explores loss, longing and memory through the lens of his recent breakup and the death of his grandfather.

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BIO: Born in Fort Worth, TX, Delaney Allen received his MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2010. His photographs have been shown nationally and internationally, most notably at Foam Museum in Amsterdam, NL. He was listed in Magenta’s Flash Forward emerging photographers list of 2013, as well as recently attended photographer Alec Soth’s Camp For Socially Awkward Storytellers. Additionally, his first publication, Between Here And There (Photo-Eye Magazine’s “Best Of” list for 2010), is featured in the 10x10 American Photobook display at the Tokyo Institute of Photography. Allen currently lives and works in Portland, OR, where he is represented by Nationale.

Julia Freeman

disentanglement of patient fingers / May 9 - 22, 2014

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Yet when, as by the gentle disentanglement of patient fingers, the ligaments of the corporeal life are unwound from about the soul, the latter, undestroyed, may still remain through its allotted day of endurance.- The Hasheesh Eater by Fitz Hugh Ludlow -

As "women's work" has historically been to serve others, the career choice of serving others often goes unrecognized because it is assumed to be innate within women. The video series disentanglement of patient fingers is of women's hands that have specifically chosen to intellectually, spiritually and emotionally help and serve others as their career choice. These eight different women have chosen careers that often times sacrifice their emotional well-being, relationships and life patterns. The videos were made during 20 minutes long individual sessions. The women were asked to create rituals and repetitive motions with materials to induce relaxation and trance. We are privileged to watch these women reveal self-care through their hands. Thank you to the women that participated in this project and thank you for your art form of service.

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BIO: Julia Freeman is a Seattle based artist originally from Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2007 with her MFA in Fibers. Her work is a continuous blend of printmaking, collaging, painting and drawing. Her experience with textiles and fibers heavily influences her process and material choices. She has exhibited at Foster/White Gallery, SOIL Art Gallery, 4Culture Gallery, Clemson University, Kirkland Arts Center, Richard Hugo House Art and at the Art Factory in Seoul, South Korea. She has been nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award in 2007 and 2010 and was a finalist in the Miami University Young Painters Competitions. She was a member of the artist-run-gallery SOIL and is a visiting instructor in the IVA program at the University of Washington. She recently opened her own contemporary art gallery in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood called The Alice with her artist friend Julie Alexander.

Virginia Wilcox

Bombay Beach: Into the Salton Sea / April 25 - May 8, 2014

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Virginia Wilcox shares colorful images from Bombay Beach, her photographic project exploring life on Southern California's Salton Sea. Photographs are accompanied by interviews with portrait subjects, YouTube videos from local real estate brokers, and ambient sounds from her shooting trips on the sea. A new story will be unveiled daily, giving viewers context into this otherworldly environment.

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BIO: Virginia Wilcox lives and works in Los Angeles, and was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She received her BFA in photography from Bard College in 2008, and is currently pursuing an MFA in photography at the Hartford School of Art. Virginia has shown work in galleries and public art installations throughout the United States and Paris, including the Hedreen Gallery (Seattle), Umbrella Arts (New York), Espace Commines (Paris), Slideluck (LA), Photographic Center Northwest (Seattle) and Violet Strays (Online). In 2014, she was commissioned to create work for Sunset Magazine’s Idea Town on the Washington Coast. She is in her fourth year of working on Bombay Beach, a series of large format photographs documenting Southern California's Salton Sea, which incorporates scanned artifacts from the region with photographs, subject interviews and video work, allowing viewers further context into this otherworldly environment.

Eirik Johnson

Madre de Dios / April 11 - 24, 2014

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This is a sound-based work. Turn your volume up.

The photographic sound project titled Madre de Dios transports visitors on a sensory journey deep into the Peruvian Amazon. Each work features a highly detailed photographic exposure of five to ten minutes in length. Each image is paired with a stereo audio recording made at the same location and time as the photograph. The resulting works feature large-scale photographic light boxes, which illuminate and dim in sync with the environmental sounds recorded during that specific exposure. As each image begins to illuminate, one hears the sound of scarlet macaws landing on branches high above, the nocturnal mating calls of toads along an oxbow lake as a thunderstorm approaches, or the revving hum of a chainsaw at an illegal gold mining camp.

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BIO: Seattle-based photographer and mixed-media artist Eirik Johnson has exhibited his work at spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Aperture Foundation in New York. He has received numerous awards including the 2012 Neddy at Cornish Award in Open Medium, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in 2009, the Santa Fe Prize in 2005, and a William J. Fulbright Grant to Peru in 2000. His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. His second monograph Sawdust Mountain was published by Aperture in 2009. His first book Borderlands was published by Twin Palms Press in 2005. Johnson’s editorial work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Magazine, Metropolis, Dwell, Audubon, GQ, and the Wall Street Journal. Johnson is currently a visiting faculty at the University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts, and is the Programs Chair at the Photographic Center Northwest.

Erin Elyse Burns

Light Map / March 14 - 27, 2014

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Click your way through light and shadows to create your own path.

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BIO: Erin Elyse Burns was raised in Reno, Nevada. She earned her BFA from the University of Nevada in 2004. She has lived and worked in Basel, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany and has exhibited her work widely. She completed her MFA at the University of Washington in 2009 and currently resides in Seattle where she is adjunct photography faculty at the University of Washington and North Seattle College.

Rich Smith

Any Given Time / February 28 - March 13, 2014

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Basically, the new thing that I'm working on is 14 poems (really there's 13, because one day there would be no poem), called Any Given Time. Each one would exist for one day, even the blank one. The premise is the voice has 14 days to live. He's born on the first day and dies on the last day and he knows it. Suddenly it doesn't sound all that good, but's it's mostly about perspective and wrestling with Romantic notions.

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BIO: Rich Smith is the author All Talk (Poor Claudia, 2014) and the chapbook Great Poem of Desire and Other Poems (Poor Claudia, 2013). This year he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Prize. His poems have appeared or will soon appear in Tin House, City Arts,Guernica, The Southeast Review, Hobart, Barrow Street, The Bellingham Review, Pleiades, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.

Jennifer Zwick

An Exercise of Formal Composition: Six Triangles / February 14 - 27 2014

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Something which appeals to me about photography is its subtle subversion of reality. Especially when photo manipulation software is more and more readily available, I take pleasure in using a camera's single point perspective to create work that looks digitally manipulated, but is in fact rudimentarily constructed.

For example, Fabric and Triangle Squared. In this image I created a small studio staging with heavily patterned fabric backdrops. I positioned a triangle in the shot so it almost floats in the space. I printed out the image, then cut out part of the picture and glued it onto a foam core cube corner. Printing out the original image a second time, I laid the cube corner on top of the picture, and rephotographed it. The result sticks to the framework of the series - a slightly off-balance right triangle (A: 34.992° / B: 55.008° / C: 90°) - but is itself just a little strange. It's hard to say if the cube in the corner exists in the same image as the triangle (and it does not). This visual ambiguity is an invitation for play.

Yellow Corner is an example of something that could easily be seen as collage - the bright yellow corner seems overlaid on the patterned background. In fact, the results of doing that - taking a picture of part of a cube, printing it out, cutting it, and gluing it to the background - might be identical. However, my method was to approach it in-camera, by cutting out a triangle-shaped hole, and laying it onto the corner of a yellow cube, so the corner sticks through the gap.

Astroturf and North Bend Red Triangle each feature a background with obvious depth, which is abruptly flattened by positioning a triangle so that it is exactly parallel to the camera plane, interrupting the receding depth of field and, again, reminding you of the innate flat surface plane inherent in all photography.

Jean Nagai

It reminded me of the sky and I look at it not often enough. /January 31 - February 13, 2014

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The first piece was an accident. Dyed fabric left out in the rain. It reminded me of the sky and I look at it not often enough. The fabrics were dyed and left outside again, some of these were left out during a cold snap or during a heavy rain storm and some were left out while it unrelentingly drizzled for days. There were times when I folded them up to only expose the top parts to the elements, leaving the bottom alone to soak and meld in the dewy grass. After a down pour I also poured onto the wet fabric to create the illusion of what had happened the night before or I would pour liquid turmeric to get a toasted hue of the days sun. At one point, feeling desperate, I poured a whole bottle of old sumi ink to black out the sun hazed feeling that was there before. I prefer sunrises to sunsets.

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BIO: Jean Nagai’s current body of work is a series of drawings using acrylic, correctional fluid and a meticulous dot technique; the many small dots form large, symbol­ based patterns which visually reference Japanese shibori­dye techniques and the pixels of computer graphics. This work is an investigation into individual identity and the nature of the collective in service of the symbolic whole; the imagery explores ancient themes of growth, time, war and rebirth that are still present in our pop culture. The works represent the confluence of spirituality and mass culture.

Celeste Cooning

Shadow Play / January 17 - 30, 2014

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BIO: I am a visual artist, based in Seattle, WA. A pervading interest in pattern and ornament led me to explore cut paper. The medium facilitates a particular response to material, shape, light, and space. The hand-cut nature is an important aspect of the work. The mindfulness of making permits breath amidst the rigors of my daily life. Ideally, the work exudes this same breath when experienced.

Currently, my studio practice is centered around creating site-specific installations to include public and private commissions, city parks, storefronts, and special events. Dramatic lighting actively engages the cut outs with vivid color, reflective light, and dynamic shadows. The oversized scale of these stylized, decorative motifs allow for varied interpretation. These ethereal environments are meant to conjure sensations of wonder and awe. It is within these moments that we become hopeful, curious, and inspired.

Susanna Bluhm

about this summer (things of death and camping) dedicated to Aubrey Bean / August 30 - September 12, 2013

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BIO: Susanna Bluhm is an artist living in Seattle. She earned her BA in Studio Art from California State University Humboldt and her MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and at the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft in Berlin. She is a member of SOIL artist-run gallery in Seattle, and is represented by G. Gibson Gallery (Seattle). She was the 2014 recipient of the Neddy at Cornish Award in Painting. Originally from Los Angeles, Bluhm has lived in Seattle since 2006, with her wife and son.

Roman Camarda

Dess(e)in / August 16 - 29, 2013

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Roman Camarda will present a series of new videos to be shown daily. The videos draw inspiration from Jean-Luc Nancy's "The Pleasure in Drawing" and continue an ongoing study into the nature of drawing, focusing on temporal process and the allowing of forms to form themselves rather than on an attempt at permanent and predetermined results.

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BIO: My name is Roman Camarda. I graduated from the University of Washington with degrees in Biochemistry and Photomedia. I am now a student at the University of California, San Francisco studying Biomedical Sciences.

Cable Griffith

First Person Traveler / August 2 - 15, 2013

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First-person Traveler is a temporal online sequence of digital images inspired by a recent trip through Switzerland, Italy, and France. Traveling by train, my wife and I spent hours looking out the window as the terrain changed from city to city and region to region. These patterned images are constructed from individually scanned oil paint marks that are copied, scaled, arranged, and colored, referencing my sketches, notes, and photographs from the journey. Each day, the image can be clicked ahead to a new one, following our meandering exploration from the farms near Zurich to the gardens of Versailles.

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BIO: Cable Griffith is an artist, curator, and educator living and working in Seattle, WA. Griffith has exhibited locally and nationally, including G. Gibson Gallery, SOIL Gallery (member 2010-2014), the Hedreen Gallery, and the Frye Art Museum. In 2008, he was a nominee for the Henry Art Gallery’s Brink Award and was recently nominated for the Portland Art Museum’s 2014 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards. Curatorially, he served as Kirkland Arts Center’s Exhibitions Director from 2007-2010 and as Exhibitions Curator at Cornish College of the Arts from 2010-2014. Griffith received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the University of Washington. He is represented in Seattle by G. Gibson Gallery.

Joe Rudko

New Paintings by Joe Rudko for Violet Strays / July 5 - 18, 2013

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BIO: Born in Washington State, Joe Rudko received a BFA in photography and drawing in 2013 from Western Washington University. His work explores the intersection between photography and interpretation through related geometric abstractions. His work has been exhibited in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Joana Stillwell

Cumulus / June 21 - July 4, 2013

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Joana debuted Cumulus on Violet Strays exploring ideas of imagination, experience, and control. Each following day featured a different video of isolated moments from unused footage, highlighting the forgotten.

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BIO: Joana Stillwell grew up around the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii, Japan, Guam, and Washington. She attended the University of Washington and graduated with a BFA in Photomedia and a BA in Art History in 2012. She has shown throughout Seattle including with Interstitial, Gallery4Culture, SOIL, ArtsWest, and internationally at the NOW&AFTER Video Art Festival. She lives and works between Richmond, Virginia and Seattle, Washington.

Chris Layman

At Work / April 12 - 26, 2013

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These are videos of me window cleaning. The videos are taken with permission from the owner. What you see is the time it takes to set up the camera, clean the window and either turn the camera off or move to a different window to work. The videos are not edited. Sometimes the camera battery runs out.

This work plays with the idea of documenting the aesthetics and feel of watching a window being cleaned as well as the highlighting the landscape in which that window portrays.

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CONTACT:christopher.s.layman@gmail.com

Scott Carsberg with Rodrigo Valenzuela

March 29 - April 11, 2013

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BIO: The idea that cooking is a craft appeals to my passion and instinct. There are no limits or borders in cooking, only the constant pursuit of simple perfection. I use only the best ingredients, with two to three elements on each plate, in a combination that highlights flavors and accents seasonality.

In my kitchen, the best of the carrot stays as a carrot. Condiments are applied to a dish as an accompaniment, not to over power. This is the essence of Italian influence in my cooking.

During the process of creation, I do not forget my fellow artisans, craftsman, and mentors who have come before me. I remember the farmers who produce the foundation of the dishes I create. Their craft and knowledge must be treated with respect and shown in a light of undisguised purity.

Minimalism puts a creative person in a state of nakedness and reveals the true artist. Therefore, the vulnerability of minimalism has to be supported with the ingredients of the highest quality. Conformity is for the technician. Simplicity is for the cook.